[This is no mere recursion, but the fate entwined with all things in this world.]
Mephisto spoke with the casual air of someone who had seen it all:
[The Wheel of Fate is also the Wheel of Life. Everything that exists in this world is inevitably drawn by its pull.]
[To explore the laws of fate is to sink into endless confusion. Only those who have truly steadied their hearts hold any chance of breaking free from fate's constraints. I believed you could see through that layer, but the speed at which you did still surprises me.]
[Which means, perhaps, I can now tell you about the Primordial Path. It's also directly tied to the shaping of my physical form.]
"Hmm? The Primordial Path?"
Faust recalled that Mephisto had mentioned this once before.
Mephisto smiled with an air of mystery:
[Do you know how the very first paths came to be?]
[They were forged by the earliest Awakened, who set out to study fate and resist it. But later, the Wheel of Fate repurposed them into conduits through which ordinary people could obtain power. A rather clever stroke, that.]
[What once required carefully orchestrated scripts to guide the common folk now needs only the bestowal of a path. The path of a sovereign will inevitably lead toward conquest and dominion; the path of a warrior will inevitably lead toward pushing one's own limits. When people come to see their path as the source of their power, they naturally become bound by it in turn.]
Now I understand why something that feels like a game class system even exists here, and why everyone just accepts it without question. So that's how it came about.
"So the Primordial Path is..."
[The most unadulterated of paths, one largely free from fate's interference. It feeds on the emotions of humankind.]
[The yearning for courage and glory, the longing for love and joy, the pursuit of knowledge and truth, the reverence for life and nature... The earliest Awakened absorbed these primal emotions to coax gifts out of the Wheel of Fate.]
Faust furrowed his brow. "That sounds like something shady."
[You're being oversensitive. These are all perfectly wholesome things. Though if we're being precise about it, it's not limited to positive emotions. The corresponding negative emotions can just as well serve as nourishment.]
"So this Primordial Path is powerful, then?"
Faust's eyes lit up. Oh, so there's a hidden class to unlock. Interesting.
[Where did you get the idea that older means stronger? The whole point of humanity is constant progress. Your current system of paths has evolved so far beyond what it once was that the comparison isn't even fair. In terms of raw power, the Primordial Path falls short in every regard, and it never even received a proper name. Historically speaking, it was little more than a brief flash in the pan.]
[But it has one irreplaceable advantage: the mysteries crystallized through the Primordial Path are the purest mysteries in existence, beyond even the Wheel of Fate's reach.]
Mephisto finally got to the point:
[Which makes it perfectly suited for shaping my physical form. A vessel capable of freely shifting between a human body and a dragon's form is no easy thing to come by.]
"So this is all for building your vessel? You should have just said so from the start. Sounds good to me."
If it were merely a matter of unlocking a hidden class for himself, Faust might have hesitated. He felt no particular pull toward the Primordial Path, and had an instinctive wariness about it.
But when it came to shaping a body for Mephisto, only the finest materials and the most optimal conditions would do. No expense to be spared.
No deeper reason was needed. A dragon, after all, was the very symbol of sovereignty.
Faust wouldn't admit to having any particular fixation on dragons, not least because he didn't even know what dragons in this world actually looked like.
Was a dragon a creature, or something transcendent, akin to a god?
More to the point, he had no idea what Mephisto even looked like. He hadn't even seen a projection yet.
So no, he had no such fixation. Absolutely not.
Faust said, "I raised you when you were small; you look after me when I'm old."
[Isn't that backwards?]
Faust changed the subject:
"Alright, how do I take up this Primordial Path on the side? Do I need to go somewhere and find a lost inheritance?"
His first instinct was that he'd have to explore some ancient ruin and unearth a forgotten technique.
[Nothing that complicated. The Primordial Path has never had any formal lineage, given how early it emerged. By modern standards, it's closer to a craft than a path, though the requirements are admittedly a bit strict: only those who have Awakened from fate can practice it.]
[People today may have lost all memory of it, but I remember it clearly. One night is more than enough to learn the craft.]
And so Faust spent the entire night under Mephisto's instruction, mastering the essentials of the Primordial Path. Just as the Fae had said, it was nothing arcane or impossibly complex. Anyone with even a basic foundation in mysticism could grasp it.
By the time the morning light came spilling through the window, Faust stretched with a long yawn and stepped outside.
He walked out into the courtyard beyond his bedchamber, just about to run through some morning stretches, when he spotted Viviana standing in the garden.
She was still dressed as she had been the night before, in her pristine gold-trimmed Royal Guard uniform, standing perfectly upright. Her pale golden hair, with its gentle wave, hung loosely about her shoulders, catching the early light and shimmering silver. Combined with her otherworldly stillness and cool composure, she looked for a moment like an illustration pulled from the pages of an epic.
She was positioned directly facing the door to his chambers, so that whoever stepped out would see her the moment they emerged.
"Your Highness..."
Viviana raised her head. Those melancholic, luminous violet eyes of hers were faintly tired.
Faust blinked. "You've been here all night?"
Viviana gave a small nod and stepped forward. Her lovely face carried a quietly aggrieved expression.
"After the things you said, how could I possibly think of anything else? I couldn't even close my eyes."
She tilted her face up toward him, and something bright stirred in her expression:
"What you said last night, that you like me... did you mean it?"
A single sentence from the person she loved had kept her awake until dawn. In this one regard, Viviana showed none of her usual composure; she was, entirely and without pretense, a girl in the grip of her feelings.
Faust shook his head with a quiet laugh. "You should be able to tell."
"That's precisely why I can hardly believe it."
Having received the answer she had hoped for more than anything, Viviana's long lashes trembled. She stepped closer, took his hand gently, and pressed it against her cheek.
Faust spread his hands open. "Nothing to not believe. Didn't you say you were going to pursue me? Well, it worked. You got through to me. That's all there is to it."
"Feelings are just like that sometimes. Things fall into place, and then one moment it all clicks. You know how that feels, don't you?"
She really did.
"Then... if that's the case, I... I'm allowed to do this now, aren't I?"
The girl pressed one hand to her chest, where her heart was hammering beneath the fabric, and drew several slow, steadying breaths before rising onto her toes and pressing a soft kiss to the prince's cheek.
Viviana was, in her own way, a girl of careful propriety. Until things had reached a certain point, she would never overstep. Even when she wanted to be physically affectionate, she would always find herself a suitably dignified justification first, something along the lines of "I suppose I have no choice" or "I'll just have to take responsibility for you." That sort of thing.
The bold move she had once made as Cinderella didn't count; Viviana had formally disowned that version of herself.
But being with someone who liked her back, and whom she liked in return, that was more than enough reason for a small intimacy like this.